Guest editorial: Trump's election panel needs a makeover

It may have sounded like a simple undertaking that wouldn’t attract much attention and might advance a worthy purpose: Set up a presidential commission on election integrity, ask for relevant data from the states, identify specific problems and offer solutions. But when President Donald Trump tried it, he found the effort is not as easy as he might have hoped.

The panel burst into the news when it asked states to provide “publicly available voter data as permitted under their state laws,” which doesn’t sound alarming. Vice Chairman Kris Kobach said, “Whatever a person on the street can walk in and get, that’s what we would like.” Included in the information it would like to get about registered voters are what elections they’ve voted in, any felony convictions, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

If this data is already public, it’s hard to see why it shouldn’t be furnished to a presidential commission. And 20 states promptly agreed to share at least some of the information.

Some secretaries of state, however, perceived a grave affront. Louisiana’s Tom Schedler, a Republican, denounced the request as “federal intrusion and overreach.” Responded Mississippi’s Delbert Hosemann, another Republican, “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.”

Some of this pushback looks like old-fashioned distrust of Washington. Some of it looks like grandstanding. But some of it stems from legitimate questions about the whole point of the exercise. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, said his “participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud.”

The panel arose after Trump charged that at least 3 million people voted illegally last year, costing him the popular vote. The claim is conspicuously devoid of persuasive evidence. Prosecutions for illegal voting are extremely rare, and the idea that it’s common — much less common enough to affect outcomes — appears to be a fantasy.

But it’s also a mistake to think there are no problems. The Pew Center on the States reported in 2012 that the voting rolls included 1.8 million dead people and some 3 million people registered to vote in more than one state.

Those numbers don’t translate into equivalent amounts of illegal voting, but they do suggest the need to rid the lists of ineligible voters. A few shoplifters filching packs of gum won’t affect Walmart’s bottom line, and a few illegal ballots won’t decide an election, but those facts are no argument for ignoring such conduct. A presidential commission could be a force for overdue improvements, such as getting states to share more information.

But that type of progress is likely to come only from the right kind of panel — one that is truly independent, bipartisan and respected. This one falls short in some crucial ways. The chairman and vice chairman — Vice President Mike Pence and Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state — are Republicans who may reasonably be suspected of doing the president’s bidding, regardless of the facts.

It lacks prominent Democrats, who could lend a useful viewpoint and greater credibility. Its records will be kept in the White House rather than the General Services Administration, as the president originally said, raising fears of who will have access to them and how they will be used.

A strong commitment to privacy would also help. By putting so many voting records in a single federal repository, the commission may invite hacking. A lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center complained that the panel is “directing state election officials to send voter records to an unsecure website.” The reaction of even GOP secretaries of state should convince Pence and Kobach that the privacy concerns are genuine and widespread.

If the administration were willing to broaden the panel to ensure its independence, tighten its privacy safeguards and address reasonable complaints from state officials, it would have a better case for proceeding.

Done right, the project could lead to worthwhile changes on a matter of some importance. It’s not too late to do it right.